Thursday, June 8, 2017

Spiritual Identity

I would like to take a moment of your time and continue the blog post that I began on Tuesday. I am truly thankful that God chooses to reveal Himself through His Word and through the obedience of those servants who boldly and victoriously declare His Word. There are those time of interaction with God that the "revelations" of God are mere moments in which God reminds us of principles that we knew but had packed them away in the storage bins of our minds! I will confess that one of those "unpacking" moments came this past Sunday night as a Pastor/Missionary from Israel stood to declare the Word of the Lord from Philippians 3.

The New River congregation offers our support to Pastor Martin and his family in their outreach efforts in Israel. God is truly opening doors for them as they seek to establish churches in various areas of that country. God is connecting them with individuals who are truly seeking to know the true identity of the Messiah whom we know to be Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I would ask that you join with us in prayer as we cover this Mission effort in Israel.

Pastor Martin felt led to share with our congregation from Philippians. There were many wonderful "nuggets of truth" declared during his message but I chose to focus on the point that the Spirit strongly deposited in my spirit. As a matter of fact, I was challenged as well as convicted as Pastor Martin spoke about our "spiritual identity." He took the scriptures and showed us the life of Paul prior to his conversion as well as the life of Paul after his conversion. Many of us will remember the initial change that came into our lives as we invited Christ into our hearts as Savior as well as Lord. We quickly were identified as Christians which signified that we had made the decision to follow Jesus Christ as His disciple.

Our identity needs to be defined in our relationship with Christ and not any of the other accomplishments or accolades that we have "earned' in our lives. We were unable to earn our salvation; it was a gift that God provided for "whosoever would believe." Paul enumerated all of the accomplishments or accolades that he could boast or brag about. He chose to remind us of his "spiritual lineage" and his ancestors. He even boasted of his passion as a Pharisee BUT HE WAS WILLING TO RELINQUISH ALL OF THAT TO KNOW JESUS!! I encourage you to pay close attention to verse 8 of Philippians 3.

Paul was willing to lay aside his previous identity to claim his new identity in Christ Jesus, his Savior! I will let the Apostle Paul speak for himself. Take a few moments and read the full discourse of Paul in Philippians 3.

Philippians 3:7-11, But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.(NKJV) (Emphasis Added)

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